Saturday, December 03, 2005

Story by Warren P. Strobel and Jonathan S. Landay of Knight Ridder Newspapers.

Here's a quote:

The State Department has been using political litmus tests to screen private American citizens before they can be sent overseas to represent the United States, weeding out critics of the Bush administration's Iraq policy, according to department officials and internal e-mails.

In one recent case, a leading expert on conflict resolution who's a former senior State Department adviser was scheduled to participate in a U.S. Embassy-sponsored videoconference in Jerusalem last month, but at the last minute he was told that his participation no longer was required.

State Department officials explained the cancellation as a scheduling matter. But internal department e-mails show that officials in Washington pressed to have other scholars replace the expert, David L. Phillips, who wrote a book, "Losing Iraq," that's critical of President Bush's handling of Iraqi reconstruction.

"I was told by a senior U.S. official that the State Department was conducting a screening process on intellectuals, and those who were against the Bush administration's Iraq policy were not welcomed to participate in U.S. government-sponsored programs," Phillips said.

What's next? Internal passports? Be nice if the Administration took time out from wiping their collective ass with the Constitution to read the damn thing.

2 comments:

The biggest difficulty is that folks are not responding to why such action does not make sense and completely undermines that famous notion we are fighting for called "freedom". Freedom of the press, freedom to express ...

There are those who would say that not having representatives of the US in foreign country speak out against this administration (or any for that matter) logically makes sense. IF you are running a campaign, would you expect your staff to go out in a public forum and critisize you?